My Top 5 Tips/Things to Avoid: Bulking Edition

Don't Heed This Advice At Your Own Risk

This post was actually written by accident…

My friend Noah Ryan asked me to write a few bullet points on some of my best bulking advice. I DID NOT understand the assignment and instead wrote an entire 1400-word essay on my top 5 best more uncommon pieces of advice and things to avoid when it comes to bulking.

So what we’re doing is I’m writing this, giving him the spark notes, and then he’ll have this post to link to when he publishes, so I suppose this was a win-win for everyone involved.

Normally I don’t do “Top 5 blah blah blah” posts because often they are super clickbait-y and I can’t stand that type of stuff, but I’ll make an exception here because, well, it was already written.

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The Mystical Concept of “Bulking”

If we’re honest, bulking is what we all actually look forward to when it comes to lifting. If we’re also being honest, it is the one place dudes mess up worse than anything and end up putting on way more fat than they do muscle which is highly counterproductive when you stop to think about it.

The reality is a good bulk takes just as much skill as does a good cut—we should treat them both with the same respect and diligence. Most guys treat them as this “free period” where they can become complacent which is silly. In reality, the only real change is you get to eat more food and don’t have to feel hungry all the time… which then will swing the pendulum and you’ll not want to eat anymore… thus is life.

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So that leads us into my first advice:

1. Don’t Become a Glutton

You should still be cognizant of eating a good diet. Yes you have more flexibility and at times might need to “junk it up” to reach your calorie goals, but the base of our diets should still be mostly whole foods as to give us the micronutrients we need and also to avoid adding excess inflammatory junk that build both bad habits and hurt our health (insulin resistance, increased inflammation, and gut issues).

I follow the same 80/20 rule (at least 80% whole food, 20% flexibility for things we otherwise wouldn’t have, I’m remiss to call it “junk” because it doesn’t have to be unhealthy, rather just more macro-unfriendly foods than normal).

Don’t use what is supposed to be a relatively small caloric surplus (300-500 calories) as a ticket to gluttony and get fat. The goal is to build more muscle than you gain fat so you need to keep this as dialed in as you do a caloric deficit for fat loss.

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2. Take Advantage of The Extra Recovery

Secondly, as calories increase, so should our recovery capabilities. This means we should be able to handle more in the gym than we would typically. Now this does not have to directly translate to volume—I prefer to work on the more moderate to lower ends of volume—rather this means we can handle more taxing lifts and things like more intensity techniques to drive more raw stimulus for growth.

We have extra wiggle room to maybe do a little extra or push new limits in the gym because, well, we can just handle it as long as we’re not going to extremes. If I have certain movements I want to really improve or if I’m even seeing some stalling in my growth, I like to throw things like drop sets, cluster sets, and rest-pause sets to add some intensifiers to help squeeze out a little more juice from my workouts.

If there is just a day and everything is just going right, you feel good, you’re extra motivated, and you just really want to be there, then take advantage of this. Go a little harder, stay a little longer, do a little more. These days seem more and more rare the longer you do this and you don’t know when it’ll happen again, so go for it, you don’t have to worry about recovering as much because the calories and sleep will let you get away with it.

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3. Don’t Bulk If You’re Already Chunky, Get Lean (Healthy!)

Don’t try to bulk if your abs don’t exist. You need to keep dieting if you can’t see any outline or semblance of your abs. What will happen is you will grow, but not just muscle, you will get fatter which can cause issues with insulin resistance and even hormone issues as aromatase—the enzyme that converts testosterone to estrogen—lives in fatty tissue, so the more fat we have the more testosterone converting to estrogen we will have which is obviously not ideal to say the least. Along with this you can start to raise your blood pressure and build visceral fat which is associated with all types of nasty health outcomes (like cancer) that I’m gonna bet we all don’t want.

Not to mention that when you do decide enough is enough and try to cut and lose the fat, you’re going to have to do it for so long it will take months and months and months away from being able to do more bulks and grow… I’m talking like 6-12, even more, months to lose the excess 50+ pounds you need to lose.

For this reason, I always suggest to try to get lean before bulking. Not just kinda lean (aka like 15-17% body fat, this is where I END my bulks), I’m talking about you have abs in any lighting when flexing and have actual separation and muscle definition. We’ll call this 10-12%, 13% MAX body fat. I’d even argue if you’re more advanced even upper single digit like 7-9% is even better but most have never pushed to that in their life and it takes WORK.

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4. Don’t Use “Bulking” As An Excuse To Be Complacent

Along the theme of some of the stuff I’ve already said, people get complacent when they are bulking because of the more flexibility and freedom they have. Often I see this turn into excuses to start drinking/partying more, getting worse sleep, and skipping out on things like cardio and getting your daily steps/activity in.

I get it, cutting forces you to be more restrictive and cuts down on the amount of freedom you have to do these things if you want to get results, so inevitably people can slip into doing them more and more because… you can.

The issue is, it’s just hurting your growth and likely increasing the rate of fat loss at the same time. Don’t do this. You’ll regret the pounds of muscle you could’ve built instead. Yes have more freedom and flexibility but let’s be smart now.

Also, cardio and daily activity isn’t just for losing fat, it’s also for your health so don’t throw it to the side just because you don’t need it to make progress. Having good cardio allows you to dig deeper into sets without getting too winded, it keeps your metabolism and insulin sensitivity good, helps your gut health, keeps your heart and mitochondria happy, PLUS it can help you eat more food which you’re gonna need as you get deeper into a bulk (yes it does burn calories but it creates far more calories in appetite than it burns).

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5. Create Urgency and Focus

Lastly, I’ll leave you with a little reminder on the most important aspect of bulk—building muscle.

To build muscle you need to be progressive overloading in the gym, in the most simple terms that is adding reps and weight to your lifts, along with other things like literally just getting better at the lifts themselves.

You need to be pushing hard and taking advantage of the extra calories that allow you to do this. Track your lifts in some type of logbook, go into the gym each session and beat those previous sessions’ numbers, and then again take advantage of the extra calories to really recover and grow.

You have a small window before you have to stop because you hate the Michelin Man you’re becoming in the mirror, understand this time is fleeting so have some damn urgency and intensity to really take advantage of this window.

The thing is, as you gain weight you’ll be getting stronger if only for the sole reason more body weight equals more leverage which equals stronger lifts, so again it’s easy to get complacent because numba go up, but if you’re not really pushing it hard and driving that effort and intensity, these increases don’t automatically equal growth—growth comes from pushing your body hard enough to create an “oh shit, we will die if we don’t get stronger” adaptive response that gives your body a reason to grow.

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Bonus 6. You Can’t Carve a Pebble

Oh, one last small thing. At times we will have to break some rules. If you are at a point where you just really need to drive more size to get to the next level, sometimes we have to “push” a bulk to a little bit outside our comfort zone. This isn’t for everyone (especially if point 3 is your issue) and you’ll know if this is you as you’ll be more intermediary, likely even advanced in your development, this is for serious people who are truly dialed in not looking for permission from a cartoon ox to get fat.

Sometimes we need to push a bulk to the point we are kinda chunky to really milk the gains to get to the next level, if this is you, don’t shy away. Keep it reasonable and stay smart, still a slight/moderate surplus, but just push on a little long, say even to that 18-20% body fat range as long as you’re not having any health issues.

The old saying is “you can’t carve a pebble” so don’t always pussyfoot around trying to stay lean with your cute little 6-pack year round, every BMF (big motherfucker) I know has had at least one bulk in their life where they did this.

Again, if this is you, you’ll know, if you don’t know, ignore this and keep grinding fam.

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Bonus 7. Stop Freakin’ Permabulking

Everyone knows the guy who has been in the gym for a few years, has built some decent size, but he’s always kinda chunky and you’ve never seen him actually cut and get lean… if you don’t know him, it’s probably you (joking, but…).

Look, I get it, it is much easier to sit there eating whatever you want, being able to go to the gym and know you’re growing, and feel big and strong all the time. I get that you might be worried about cutting and “but I don’t want to lose my gains” or “I don’t want to go into a deficit and stop growing.

Here’s how I’ve seen it go down countless times (it’s become a meme and gym lore it’s so common, almost a rite of passage):

You feel good, like I said, big and strong, but you know the abs could use some work and you actually want to see them for the first time…

Actually, we’ll finish this in a post just like this I’ll do for Cutting…

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Putting It All Together

This was different and fun for me to write, I’m going to do more of these little posts on uncommon mistake and advice for various topics that I think people don’t talk enough about.

I didn’t intentionally cliff hang you, I realized while writing it that it would be much better served on a post I’ll do like this on cutting, but I also thought it was funny to be dramatic and leave what I wrote there…

I’m open to ideas on this, what topics do you think aren’t covered with enough nuances or you have the most struggles with (I already know mobility will be the first one mentioned, trust me, I heard you all on my thread so I’ll work on a huge post on this soon, probably with some videos and stuff too).

Anyway, heed this advice here because I didn’t say it just to say it, I see these issues pop all literally all the time for the majority of people.

- Ox

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DISCLAIMER

This is not Legal, Medical, or Financial advice. Please consult a medical professional before starting any workout program, diet plan, or supplement protocol. These are opinions from a Cartoon Ox.